AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENTS & COUNTER ARGUMENTS

AFFIRMATIVE ARGUMENT / NEGATIVE COUNTER ARGUMENT
Animals can feel pain / -Agreed. However, animal pain is preferable to human pain (e.g. animal testing to save human lives)
-Genetically engineer animals not to feel pain
-Animals do not live as long as humans anyways
-Impossible to eliminate all pain
Evil to inflict pain on another / -Justice system is evil b/c it inflicts pain on people
-Agreed; however it is a necessary evil
Feasible to recognize animal rights / -No it is not. Animals cannot “go to court” and police cannot protect every animal everywhere
-Feasibility is not the debate. The true value of Justice requires fairness and not feasibility
Animals should be recognized as individuals / -Animals are not rational actors. They act on instinct. They do not pass on knowledge/memes to their young
Humans have a moral obligation to protect animals / -Morality is based on how humans treat other humans. (Human concept)
-Natural selection (e.g. humans eat animals)
-Infeasible to protect all animals (e.g. animals die in the wild)
-Agreed; however, moral obligation to humans is greater
Animals should be recognized as a group / -If we recognize as a group, it doesn’t matter b/c we should not recognize their rights at all
-As a group, animals will have fewer rights than humans
-Humans as a group, require a stronger set of rights and priorities
-Agreed
Society would not tolerate humans to be treated like animals / -Justice protects humans from being treated like animals
-Human rights are different from animal rights
Factory farming is bad for the environment / -Justice is the focus, and not the environment
-Factory farming is necessary to feed humans
-Agreed, but no better alternative
-Implementation problem, not inherent to factory farming
Mistreating animals is bad for humans / -Mistreating animals is good for humans (food, pop. control, med. testing)
Humans are animals / -Human rights are not equivalent to animal rights
-Animals rights exclude human rights
-There is no debate if we equate animal rights to human rights (there is a distinction)
Animals unable to communicate similar to humans who cannot communicate (intellectually disabled) / -True; however the intellectually disabled are a significant minority of a larger population who can communicate
-Cannot use intellectually disabled as a general case to compare average animals to average humans
Justice never identifies species / -Justice is a human concept
-State of nature has no Justice
Animals have equal right to life / -Equal right to life does not equate animal life to human life
-Human life > animal life
-Survival of the fittest (natural selection)
-Animals don’t live as long
Animals have the right to self-ownership / -Ownership of animals benefits both animals and humans
Special groups of humans have special rights protections…so should animals / -Animals have special rights too (i.e. animal rights)
-Justice for humans does not necessarily require animal rights

NEGATIVE ARGUMENTS & COUNTER ARGUMENTS

NEGATIVE ARGUMENT / AFFIRMATIVE COUNTER ARGUMENT
Disregarding animal rights is beneficial to humans / -Not in all cases (e.g. environment)
-Disruption of the ecosystem will hurt humans drastically (e.g. extinct species)
Medical testing on animals benefits humans / -<1% (extreme minority) are tested
-Medical testing on humans exists
-
Protecting animal rights will hurt poor people / -diversion of funds is an implementation detail that does not necessarily happen if you budget properly
-poor fishermen should find other things to fish (e.g. protection of whales)
-poor fishermen will ultimately lose their jobs anyways when there are no more fish
Animals do not have a sense of rights / -Animals can still feel pain (physical and emotional)
-All living beings have the right not to feel pain
Rights are not meant for animals / -All living beings have a right to be free from pain
Not feasible to recognize animal rights / -Yes, feasible if proper planning and implementation
-Recognition does not mean total protection
Animals cannot participate in rights claim / -Does not mean that they don’t have rights
-Intellectually disabled
-Infants
Animals do not survive long in nature / -Generalization, some animals live longer than humans
-Does this mean that we can infringe on rights of humans who do not live long
Human life is more valuable / -Does not say that animals have no value
-You can value both
-Are some humans worth more than others?
Investing in animal rights protection will hurt humans / -Investing in protection will help the ecosystem and humans
-Creation of new markets and economies
Survival of the fittest / -Humans also have the advantage of intelligence  protect ecosystem for future humans
Justice cannot be applied to Nature / -Environmental laws exist where Justice protects Nature
-Question is whether or not Justice should recognize animal rights
Animals do not participate in the social contract / -Animals do participate b/c protecting them will benefit humans
-Animals often protect their human companions
Animals are used as resources, not as individual actors (means to an end) / -Animals are often companions
-Bad generalization, only true for some animals
If somebody kills a dog, can they be tried for murder? / -They can be tried for murder of a dog (animal cruelty)
-Already laws in place to protect animals (Justice already recognizes some)
Many humans lack rights, so priority should be on humans / -Agreed, but that does not mean you should ignore animal rights
-Human rights and animals rights are not mutually exclusive
Justice is a human concept / -Definition of justice does not exclude it to humans
-“Nature” is a human concept, does that mean animals are not in it?